Glassdoor.com® Launches Employees’ Choice Awards Unveiling the 50 Best Places to Work

SAUSALITO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Glassdoor.com®, a career and workplace community bringing greater transparency to company cultures and compensation, today released its first annual Employees’ Choice Awards¹, listing the top 50 “Best Places to Work” based on surveys² collected from employees at more than 11,000 companies operating in the United States. General Mills had the highest rating from its employees, followed closely by Bain & Company, Netflix, Adobe, and Northwestern Mutual, which round out the top five companies on Glassdoor’s inaugural list.

“Despite the inherent challenges faced by most businesses today, reading just a handful of company reviews on Glassdoor.com makes it easy to see the attributes that make these top companies consistently stand out and distinguish themselves from the pack.”

“The Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Awards are truly unique in that they are based on the unbiased voices of the people who walk the halls every day and know these companies best,” said Robert Hohman, CEO and co-founder of Glassdoor.com. “Despite the inherent challenges faced by most businesses today, reading just a handful of company reviews on Glassdoor.com makes it easy to see the attributes that make these top companies consistently stand out and distinguish themselves from the pack.”

Unlike many workplace-related awards that require companies to self nominate, Glassdoor relies solely on the input from employees. The ranking of the top 50 list was determined by each company’s overall rating³ on Glassdoor, which is the cumulative average rating from employees who elected to participate in a 20-question survey that addresses key workplace factors, including work/life balance, career opportunities, communication, compensation and benefits, employee morale, recognition and feedback, senior leadership as well as fairness and respect.

General Mills’ rating was 4.5 and employees gave CEO Ken Powell a 96% approval rating. The complete list along with corresponding CEO approval rating is below.

Glassdoor Employees’ Choice: 50 Best Places to Work
Rank		Company		Overall Rating (5-point scale)		CEO		CEO Approval Rating (%)
1		General Mills		4.5		Ken Powell		96
2		Bain & Company		4.5		Orit Gadiesh		88
3		Netflix		4.4		Reed Hastings		100
4		Adobe		4.3		Shantanu Narayen		82
5		Northwestern Mutual		4.2		Edward J. Zore		98
6		Whole Foods		4.2		John P. Mackey		85
7		Google		4.1		Eric E. Schmidt		89
8		SAP		4.1		Henning Kagermann		75
9		Continental Airlines		4.1		Larry Kellner		79
10		NetApp		4.0		Dan Warmenhoven		79
11		Intuit		4.0		Brad D. Smith		78
12		McKinsey & Company		4.0		Ian Davis		85
13		FactSet		3.9		Philip A. Hadley		91
14		Boston Consulting		3.9		Hans-Paul Bürkner		71
15		Procter & Gamble		3.9		A.G. Lafley		86
16		Caterpillar		3.9		Jim Owens		85
17		Genentech		3.8		Art Levinson		94
18		CareerBuilder		3.8		Matt Ferguson		86
19		Apple		3.8		Steve Jobs		90
20		Juniper Networks		3.8		Kevin Johnson		n/a
21		Marriott		3.8		Bill Marriott Jr.		82
22		NIKE		3.8		Mark G. Parker		100
23		Ernst & Young Global		3.8		Jim Turley		79
24		MITRE		3.8		Alfred Grasso		53
25		Chevron		3.8		Dave O'Reilly		73
26		Goldman Sachs		3.8		Lloyd C. Blankfein		86
27		Nordstrom		3.8		Blake W. Nordstrom		75
28		Citrix Systems		3.7		Mark B. Templeton		77
29		Schlumberger		3.7		Andrew Gould		70
30		Booz Allen Hamilton		3.7		Ralph W. Shrader		61
31		National Instruments		3.7		James J. Truchard		74
32		Novell		3.7		Ron Hovsepian		64
33		PricewaterhouseCoopers		3.7		Sam DiPiazza Jr.		59
34		American Express		3.6		Ken Chenault		80
35		Cisco Systems		3.6		John T. Chambers		79
36		USAA		3.6		Joe Robles Jr.		83
37		EMC		3.6		Joe Tucci		60
38		Capital One		3.6		Rich Fairbank		68
39		QUALCOMM		3.6		Paul E. Jacobs		75
40		MetLife		3.6		Rob Henrikson		53
41		Lockheed Martin		3.6		Robert J. Stevens		63
42		Texas Instruments		3.6		Rich Templeton		64
43		US Army		3.6		Pete Geren III		50
44		Deloitte		3.5		Jim Quigley		64
45		Wells Fargo		3.5		John G. Stumpf		65
46		Best Buy		3.5		Brad Anderson		64
47		salesforce.com		3.5		Marc Benioff		69
48		Accenture		3.5		Bill Green		67
49		FedEx		3.5		Fred Smith		67
50		Paychex		3.5		Jon Judge		59

For more information about the awards and sample reviews from top companies, visit http://www.glassdoor.com/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm and the Glassdoor.com blog (http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/). A complete copy of the Glassdoor survey along with additional information about the Best Places to Work methodology may be requested via email: BestPlacestoWork@glassdoor.com. For more information about Glassdoor and to read company reviews visit www.glassdoor.com. To receive regular updates about new and interesting data and reports, visit and/or subscribe to the Glassdoor blog.

About Glassdoor.com

Glassdoor.com is a new career and workplace community where anyone can find and anonymously share real-time reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs for specific employers – for free. Designed to deliver greater transparency around our work life, Glassdoor enables employees, job seekers, employers and recruiters to simultaneously see – for the first time – unedited employee opinions about a company’s work environment along with details of pay, benefits and CEO approval ratings. Glassdoor was founded in 2007 and launched its public beta in June 2008. Glassdoor is headquartered in Sausalito, Calif. and was founded by Richard Barton, Robert Hohman and Tim Besse.

¹ To be eligible for the inaugural Employees’ Choice Awards for the Best Places to Work companies must have received at least 25 reviews from U.S.-based employees who are current employees of the company or who were employed at some time during 2008, maintain a ‘satisfied’ or above cumulative average overall and across eight workplace factors addressed in the company’s voluntary 20-question survey, and the company’s CEO must have an approval rating higher than 50%.

² Glassdoor carefully reviews each ratings survey, company review and salary report submitted through its website and only those surveys and reports that are approved by the Glassdoor research team are eligible for the list.

³ The overall rating on Glassdoor.com is based on a 5-point scale with 5 being “extremely satisfied” and 1 being “extremely dissatisfied.”